Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - 2:00 - 3:00 Central Time
Interested in conducting some usability test of your library website or resources, but not sure where to start? Come to this one session and hear about what things to consider when conducting usability tests for the first time. We will cover research questions, recruitment, creating user study scripts and other best practices.
Scope: This 60- minute session is relatively cut-and-dry: We’ll be teaching librarians how to do usability tests on their library services. Basically from start to finish, we will explain what librarians need to do to implement this method of gathering user feedback. We will also discuss implementations of usability tests at Purdue University libraries.
Content:
What is a Usability Test?
User Centered Design Process- introduction
How to plan your Usability Test topic
What are my objectives?
How much time do I have?
How much money do I have?
How much people resource do I have?
Who am I presenting this to?
Is this for an existing product?
Research Questions Recruitment
The Usability Study Script
Best Practices
Capturing Results
Interpreting Results
Communicating
Findings
Where to find out more.
Approach: There are many places on the internet to get information about usability tests, but our webinar is focused on reference librarians who are interested in using usability tests to improve services at their libraries. We examine what worked in our library as a case study, but will also discuss the work at other libraries and in the private sector, in terms of usability tests. Our goal is to give librarians the information they need to use usability tests effectively at their library. Whereas our first webinar is theoretical (User Experience Research 101), this webinar is very practical.
Questions with discussion and polls throughout the webinar to gauge comprehension as well as foster critical thinking (10 minutes) with 5 minutes for discussion at the end.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will be able to describe usability and user centered design and its applications to libraries.
Participants will be aware of various documents and workflows needed when doing usability tests.
Participants will be aware of resources for usability studies and where to find out more.
Registration fees:
$40 for RUSA members
$50 for ALA members
$65 for non-ALA members
$35 for ALA student members and retired members
http://www.ala.org/rusa/how-conduct-usability-studies-librarian-primer
